Product Description
Shades of Difference
Author: Padraig O'Malley
Format: Paperback
Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa
Mac Maharaj played a pivotal role in the liberation movement for nearly four decades, suffering brutal tortures and twelve years’ imprisonment on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. It was Maharaj who smuggled out the manuscript of Mandela’s autobiography and later re-entered South Africa to establish a political and military underground on a mission so secret that only those at the highest levels were even aware of its existence.
Drawing from extensive interviews with Maharaj over eleven years and hitherto unavailable documents, Padraig O’Malley vividly renders a true tale of heroism and a gripping insider’s look at the struggle for freedom in South Africa.
About the Author
Padraig O’Malley is a scholar, author, and mediator. The author of Biting at the Grave, one of the New York Times Editors’ Choice Best Books of 1990, he has written extensively about the conflict in Northern Ireland and facilitated meetings for more than thirty years that helped open the way for negotiations to end the conflict. Beginning in 1989, he embarked on the Heart of Hope project (www.omalley.co.za), during which he conducted more than two thousand hours of interviews chronicling South Africa’s journey from apartheid to democracy. O’Malley is the John Joseph Moakley Professor for International Peace and Reconciliation at the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston; the founding editor of the New England Journal of Public Policy; and a visiting professor of political studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
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